What this budget holds for the middle class?

Saturday, 28 February 2015 ( Agency) Arun Jaitley has announced his budget 2015-16 before the Parliament.

Highlights:

Limit of deduction of health insurance premium increased from `15000 to ` 25000, for senior citizens limit increased from `20000 to `30000.Senior citizens above the age of 80 years, who are not covered by health insurance, to be allowed deduction of ` 30000 towards medical expenditures.Deduction limit of ` 60000 with respect to specified decease of serious nature enhanced to ` 80000 in case of senior citizen.Additional deduction of `25000 allowed for differently abled persons.Limit on deduction on account of contribution to a pension fund and the new pension scheme increased from ` 1 lakh to `1.5 lakh.Additional deduction of ` 50000 for contribution to the new pension scheme u/s 80CCD.Payments to the beneficiaries including interest payment on deposit in Sukanya Samriddhi scheme to be fully exempt.Service-tax exemption on Varishtha Bima Yojana.Concession to individual tax-payers despite inadequate fiscal space.Lot to look forward to as fiscal capacity



improvees.Conversion of existing excise duty on petrol and diesel to the extent of ` 4 per litre into

Road Cess to fund investment.

Service Tax exemption extended to certain pre cold storage services in relation to fruits and vegetables so as to incentivise value addition in crucial sector.Negative List under service-tax is being slightly pruned to widen the tax base.Yoga to be included within the ambit of charitable purpose under Section 2(15) of theIncome-tax Act.To mitigate the problem being faced by many genuine charitable institutions, it is proposed to modify the ceiling on receipts from activities in the nature of trade, commerce or business to 20% of the total receipts from the existing ceiling of ` 25 lakh Most provisions of Direct Taxes Code have already been included in the Income-tax Act, therefore, no great merit in going ahead with the Direct Taxes Code as it exists today.Direct tax proposals to result in revenue loss of ` 8315 crore, whereas the proposals in indirect taxes are expected to yield ` 23383 crore. Thus, the net impact of all tax proposals would be revenue gain of `15068 crore.